Life at the carniceria / Cooks crowd Latino butcher shops for pig's feet, carnitas, cauldrons of frying pork rinds and, above all, a taste of home

Stett Holbrook, Special to The Chronicle

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, October 29, 2003

Photo: CRAIG LEE

Image 1of/9

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 9

-

-

Photo: CRAIG LEE

Image 2 of 9

-

-

Photo: CRAIG LEE

Image 3 of 9

-

-

Photo: CRAIG LEE

Image 4 of 9

Chavez Super Market at 3282 Middlefield Road in Menlo Park. Story on Lation meat markets called a Carniceria. The assignment had the name as "Los Chavez." It has no "Los" in the name, just a note from the store to get that correct. Photo of butcher, Bulfrano Magana, holding a tray of Chicken Fajitas marinade ready to be cooked.
Event on 9/23/03 in Menlo Park.
CRAIG LEE / The Chronicle less

Chavez Super Market at 3282 Middlefield Road in Menlo Park. Story on Lation meat markets called a Carniceria. The assignment had the name as "Los Chavez." It has no "Los" in the name, just a note from the store ... more

Photo: CRAIG LEE

Image 5 of 9

-

-

Photo: CRAIG LEE

Image 6 of 9

Belmar "La Gallinita" Meat market located at 2989 24th street at the corner of Harrison street. The store's nickname translates to "little rooster." Photo of meat stacked called Cecina Fresca at the upper top of the photo. Event on 9/22/03 in San Francisco.
CRAIG LEE / The Chronicle less

Belmar "La Gallinita" Meat market located at 2989 24th street at the corner of Harrison street. The store's nickname translates to "little rooster." Photo of meat stacked called Cecina Fresca at the upper top ... more

Photo: CRAIG LEE

Image 7 of 9

Carniceria Michoacana, a Lation meat market located inside Supermercado Mi Pueblo at 2838 International Blvd. at the corner of 29th Avenue in Oakland. Photo of Chicharrones, which fried Pig skins. Event on 9/22/03 in Oakland.
CRAIG LEE / The Chronicle less

Carniceria Michoacana, a Lation meat market located inside Supermercado Mi Pueblo at 2838 International Blvd. at the corner of 29th Avenue in Oakland. Photo of Chicharrones, which fried Pig skins. Event on ... more

Photo: CRAIG LEE

Image 8 of 9

Belmar "La Gallinita" Meat Market at 2989 24th street at the coner of Harrison. Story on Lation meat markets called a Carniceria. Photo of owner and butcher, Salvador Vazquez, frying up some Chicharrones, which is fried pig skins.
Event on 9/25/03 in San Francisco.
CRAIG LEE / The Chronicle less

Belmar "La Gallinita" Meat Market at 2989 24th street at the coner of Harrison. Story on Lation meat markets called a Carniceria. Photo of owner and butcher, Salvador Vazquez, frying up some Chicharrones, which ... more

Photo: CRAIG LEE

Image 9 of 9

Life at the carniceria / Cooks crowd Latino butcher shops for pig's feet, carnitas, cauldrons of frying pork rinds and, above all, a taste of home

1 / 9

Back to Gallery

You can't walk into San Francisco's Belmar Meat Market and fail to get hungry.

Located in a stout corner building clad in white iron bars, the Mission District market is a neighborhood institution. It was dubbed La Gallinita (the little chicken) because of a wooden chicken that hung outside at the market's first location on 28th and Bryant.

"Unfortunately, that chicken was lost," says second-generation owner Salvador Vazquez ruefully. His father and older brother opened the store in 1961 and moved it to its current location on 24th Street and Harrison in 1975. "Someone stole it. I wish I had that chicken here."

As a reminder, a few plaster chickens sit atop the meat counter, sharing space with jars of pickled pig's feet, planks of salt cod and half-pint containers of freshly rendered pork lard.

In the market's tiny luncheonette, the air is filled with aromas from a small, changing menu that includes caldo de res (beef soup), birria (goat stew), menudo (tripe soup), tacos and tamales.

This is a carniceria, a butcher shop with a distinctly Latino flavor. While supermarkets tout the convenience of one-stop shopping, these neighborhood specialty stores offer products familiar to Latino customers in a familiar setting. Here, you'll find thinly cut meats like arrachera (skirt steak) and palomilla (top sirloin) for grilling and pan-frying as well as items not typically sold in mainstream supermarkets like beef hearts, pig's feet, beef intestines, and pork necks. Carnicerias also sell prepared meats like carnitas (roasted pork), chicharron and carne seca (dried beef) for quick meals at home.

But carnicerias are more than butcher shops. In spite of the profusion of sleek, one-size-fits-all supermarkets, the soulful carniceria thrives as a cultural oasis that takes Latino customers back to the cuisines of their homelands. Shoppers chat in Spanish with butchers and each other as they lean over the meat counter, offering cooking advice or just exchanging neighborhood gossip. The meats, fresh tortillas, chiles, spices and Mexican cheeses offer the comforts of home that only food can.

"The majority of our customers are from Latin America," explains Ulises Arias, manager of Carniceria Michoacana in Oakland's Fruitvale District. "It's easier and more familiar for them here."

Spanish spoken

Carnicerias usually have someone on hand who speaks English, but Spanish is helpful. For non-Latinos, the markets offer a window into the food and culture of Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries not found on the "international" aisle of major supermarkets.

"They're just a fun place to go," says San Francisco resident and La Gallinita customer Danny Palmerlee. "You get in there and they're all busy and full of action. You kind of feel like you're sneaking in and getting it from the source."

Palmerlee is a fan of La Gallinita's carnitas, so much so that for a camping trip this summer he bought nearly 20 pounds.

When the original La Gallinita opened, the carniceria was a lonely outpost of Latino food and culture. Back then, Spanish was seldom heard on San Francisco streets, and Vazquez recalls only two other Latino butcher shops in the neighborhood -- El Rey on 24th Street and La Cumbre on Valencia.

But that's all changed. The surge of immigration from Latin America over the past 30 years has altered the way San Francisco and other Bay Area cities look and what people eat. The carniceria is central to this shift.

Even the Chinese ...

"Even the Chinese in the neighborhood speak a little Spanish now," says Vazquez, 59, who runs La Gallinita with his son, Cesar.

While carniceria fare like pig and beef feet, beef testicles, tripe and beef brains are not widely consumed in this country, they're commonly eaten in Latin America, where a history of frugality means making use of virtually all parts of an animal.

"Those are delicacies in Mexico," says Gilbert Vasquez, a clerk at Oakland's Hernandez Meat Market, as he pointed to pig's feet, beef tongue and tripe in the meat case. The store is on International Boulevard in the city's Latino Fruitvale District.

In his home in Jalisco, Mexico, says Vasquez, tostadas topped with pickled pig's feet are a beloved local specialty.

"You have to pick the meat off the bone with your hands, that's the fun part," he says with a dreamy look in his eyes. "Oh gosh, I'm getting hungry thinking about it."

At nearby Carniceria Michoacana, customer Jose Garcia bought book tripe, or librillo, for the pot of menudo he planned to make. It's a classic morning- after soup topped with chopped onions and a squeeze of lime.

"They have everything you want here," says Garcia, gesturing to the expansive display of meats.

Within walking distance

Hilda Garcia walked from her home around the corner to Carniceria Michoacana to buy a pound of liver for higado en cebollado -- liver simmered in onions and tomatoes.

"I shop here because it's close to my house so I don't have to travel so far," she says. "And the quality is very good and everyone speaks Spanish."

In carnicerias, thin is in. You won't find thick steaks like a New York strip or filet mignon. Thinly sliced meat is grilled or cooked a la plancha --

quickly pan-fried. Beef is the meat of choice, followed by pork and chicken. Seafood -- usually catfish, tilapia and shrimp -- occupies the smallest place in a carniceria.

Arrachera is a big seller in carnicerias. Called carne asada (grilled meat) when it's served inside a burrito at a taqueria, it's known as skirt steak in English. In addition to his claim as San Francisco's oldest surviving carniceria, La Gallinita's Vazquez says he is responsible for popularizing flap meat, a cut similar to arrachera that goes by the same name or is sometimes called falda. He cut it out of sides of beef himself before it became popular and processors started doing it.

"I should have patented that cut," he says.

Many carnicerias sell arrachera preparada (marinated skirt steak) ready for the grill. Though few butchers are willing to reveal their recipe because each thinks his is the best, most recipes include garlic salt, onion, freshly squeezed orange juice and the inevitable "secret ingredient."

Although it's not as large as San Francisco or Oakland's Latino populations, Napa has a thriving Latino community, owing in large part to the wine industry's reliance on Mexican labor.

Gabriel Garcia says his Latino Market on Jefferson Street is the city's oldest carniceria. Pinatas hang low from the ceiling above the small, but well- stocked meat counter. Next to the chicharron is fried pork belly, a specialty not often seen in carnicerias. The meat market and grocery store is known for its marinated arrachera, which typically sells out on weekends.

"It's a recipe that's been in the family for about 25 years," says clerk Junior Garcia.

Garcia says customers have come from as far as Oregon to stock up on longaniza seca. The spicy pork and beef sausage hangs in long strands from a horizontal wooden pole where it's air-dried by a slowly turning ceiling fan.

Find a carniceria and there are usually plenty of good restaurants and taquerias nearby. Driving along Middlefield Road in Redwood City is like a trip to Mexico -- Michoacan, to be exact. For years, immigrants from the little town of Aguililla, Michoacan, have immigrated to Redwood City. "There are supposedly more people from Aguililla living in Redwood City than there are people living in Aguililla now," says Beto Chavez, general manager of Chavez Supermarket.

Little Michoacan

The strip of Middlefield Road between downtown and the Atherton city limits is called "little Michoacan" and is lined with taquerias, markets and, of course, carnicerias.

David Chavez, Beto Chavez' Aguililla-born father, opened his first market in Redwood City in 1984 and has since expanded to Hayward, Sunnyvale and Menlo Park. The markets feature gleaming, long meat counters as well as groceries and Latino specialties. They all sell Harris Ranch natural beef, a brand-name rarity in carnicerias.

Unlike many carnicerias, Chavez Supermarket puts an English translation of the meats on the signs in front of them. Espinazo is labeled pork neck, the preferred meat for pozole, a spicy pork and hominy soup. Charmorro is beef shank, a big meaty section of leg perfect for beef stew or caldo de res. Other cuts in the store don't translate as well -- tripas de leche, beef intestines that are great grilled for tacos, are called beef marrow guts. Carne para tamales translates as cushion meat, perhaps because it's used to stuff pillowy tamales

In addition to the specialty cuts of meat, Chavez says his Latino customers shop at his meat markets because of the knowledge and one-on-one contact his butchers provide.

It's the counter service and the cuts they're looking for, he says.

But he counts non-Latinos with a taste for carne asada, Mexican cheese and other specialties as customers, too.

"To our Hispanic customers we're a grocery store, but to our American customers we're a specialty store," he says.

For San Francisco chef Johnny Alamilla, Latino markets and carnicerias are sources of inspiration. Alma, his Mission District restaurant, is one of the Bay Area's exemplars of Nuevo Latino cuisine. While he gets his meat from wholesalers, he likes the flavor a carniceria imparts on the neighborhood. He's often seen a Chilean family shouldering a carniceria-purchased split pig, bringing it home for a backyard pig roast.

"That, to me, is the Mission," he says. "That's why I wanted to have my restaurant here."

Carnicerias are still a vital part of the Bay Area's culinary history, he says.

CARNICERIAS

As with any butcher shop, let your eyes and nose be your guide when shopping at carnicerias. If the store doesn't look or smell clean, shop elsewhere. The following is a list of carnicerias mentioned in the story.

Many of the cuts in carnicerias are the same as those in traditional butcher shops but go by Spanish names. Other cuts are not found in butcher shops or are unique to carnicerias. While the names of cuts vary throughout Latin America, the following is a glossary of common carniceria products as they are generally known in the Bay Area.

Adobo: Spicy, chile-based marinade. Puerco en adobo, or pork in adobo, is a common preparation.

INSTRUCTIONS:

Put the pork in a large pot and cover with water. Bring to a simmer. Simmer for 1 1/2 hours, skimming the foam that rises to the top.

Meanwhile, put the chiles in a bowl and cover with boiling water. Let soak for 20 minutes.

Working in batches if necessary, puree the chiles, garlic, onion and salt, adding some of the chile-soaking liquid as needed until you get a puree about as thick as ketchup.

Remove the pork from the pot and shred the meat, discarding any bones. Return the meat to the pot with the chile puree, chicken broth, oregano and hominy. Simmer for 30 minutes. Taste, and add more salt, if necessary.

Chicharrones can be purchased at many carnicerias. Look for larger chunks that have been stored hot. Yucca is available in most markets in the Mission District and in the specialty food sections of many supermarkets. Look for light- to medium-brown yucca that is heavily coated with wax. Yucca oxidizes even before it is peeled.

Avoid dark-brown to black yucca with flaking wax; this is a sign of aging.

INGREDIENTS:

2 medium-size yucca spears

2 cups finely diced red onion

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

Olive oil as needed

2 quarts chicken stock

2 teaspoons ground toasted cumin

1 cup finely diced ripe seeded tomato

2 poblano chiles, seeded and finely diced

1 pound freshly cooked chicharrones (pork rinds)

Salt and pepper to taste

Chopped cilantro

INSTRUCTIONS:

Preheat the oven to 350.

Peel the yucca and cut into 4- to 5-inch-long pieces. Cut each piece into quarters and remove the core. Boil gently in salted water until tender but not falling apart, about 30 minutes. Drain. Put the yucca in a large baking pan.

Sweat the onion and garlic in a little oil in a heavy saucepan until translucent. Add the chicken stock and cumin. Cook until reduced by half.

Add the tomato, chiles and chicharrones, season with salt and pepper and pour over the yucca.

Bake for 30 to 40 minutes. The yucca will have absorbed most of the liquid and the chicharrones will be crisp.

Latest from the SFGATE homepage:

Click below for the top news from around the Bay Area and beyond. Sign up for our newsletters to be the first to learn about breaking news and more. Go to 'Sign In' and 'Manage Profile' at the top of the page.